From the poor suburbs of Dar es Salaam, Jagwa Music play a style of music with chakacha roots known as mchiriku. The group features minimal instruments including a hand-held Casio keyboard, a few drums, whistles and a battered old stool beaten with sticks for extra percussive flavour. Jagwa Music guarantees to set any concert venue ablaze with explosive performances that always keep the crowds jumping and bouncing from start to finish. Their stage show is awesome – a non-stop gymnastic workout choreographed with skill and sensitivity, combining theatrics, acrobatic prowess, no small amount of humour and more energy than an atom bomb. Song lyrics are embellished on the spot with spontaneous commentary, depending on what's going on in the news and who's around in the audience. Usually combined with witty observations about the daily struggles of survival in a world surrounded by injustice. For example, in Shangazi Mbaya (A Cruel Aunt), the singer comments: I did not want to say, but today I say it in the open
What aunt did to us
I will say in the open, the bad things she did to us,
Wanting to rob our inheritance,
Shamelessly she pretended not to know us in the court.
Aunt is cruel, but her plan did not work
God did not allow her
The court found out….
We have the right to inherit our late father's wealth These days when you tune in to most local radio stations you can now hear a lot of Tanzanian music. So-called bongo flava, in Swahili language, but the rhythms and melody is more USA than EA. You never hear mchiriku on the radio, despite its popularity with the urban youth. Radio presenters allege this is because mchiriku was always considered to be kihuni – music for poor people and associated with drinking and bhang-smoking. For Jagwa Music, things look set to change. In October 2005 the group performed at the Sage Centre, Gateshead (UK) at the World Music Expo (WOMEX) where many delegates greatly appreciated the group's refreshing energy and rawness, rarely seen these days in Europe where African music is often sanitized by the "world music" fashionmongers. The group is now receiving enquiries from festival promoters all around the globe and it's looking like mchiriku music will finally gain the international recognition and respect that it always deserved. Jagwa Music & Jahazi Media are currently working on a new recording for international release in summer 2009.
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